Arts & Literature: Feeding Her Child a Green Slipper Instead of a Cucumber

Abstract

I first observed the confident, sad, yet hopeful face of Nabat Fayiaq Rahman through the black screen of the TV. She was wearing a traditional, completely black Kurdish outfit that matched the stage curtains designed for the anniversary of the Anfal genocide, marked on April 14th of each year. The Kurdish Anfal genocide in Iraq was perpetrated by Saddam Hussein’s regime in the 1980s. Human Rights Watch (1994) estimates that as many as 182,000 Kurds were buried alive in mass graves; many of these mass graves were found after Hussein was overthrown. More than 2.5 million people were displaced, 4500 villages destroyed, and 250 towns and villages exposed to chemical weapons.